CINCINNATI (AP) -- A bank executive has disavowed a threat from the bank's lawyer to withhold loans for inner-city properties unless the city stops issuing criminal complaints over housing code violations, according to a letter sent to City Council members.

"To ever insinuate that if we don't get the city's cooperation we'll stop lending in the inner city is just ludicrous," Union Savings Bank chairman Louis Beck said.

The bank has balked at fixing up two properties it acquired through foreclosures. A criminal case alleges that the bank failed to adequately barricade a vacant building it was ordered to repair or block off the entrance steps, cut weeds and remove trash and falling plaster.

"Needless to say, the criminal complaint distresses the bank," attorney Brian E. Chapman wrote in an Oct. 9 letter to City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr. "If the lending institutions are faced with serious financial loss or criminal complaints related to building code violations, they will simply cease providing the capital, and the properties will further deteriorate without any hope of rehabilitation."

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